


Stretches

by Empress_Nocturne



Category: Coraline (2009)
Genre: Gen, coraline and wybie are great friends, idk what else to say, just kinda some reality time space breaking but like casually, someone applied the bonk filter to irl stuff, spink and forcible are gay together, we stan the cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:06:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25664098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Empress_Nocturne/pseuds/Empress_Nocturne
Summary: After her experience with the Other Mother, Coraline starts seeing cracks in reality. Nothing bad, really, or so she has to reassure herself.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	Stretches

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while back for the Ethereal Zine, a Coraline zine that ended up not going to print. Hope you enjoy, had a blast writing this piece!

Ever since her experience with the Other Mother and the Other Mother’s world, Coraline began to see cracks in her reality everywhere.

They were like cracks and lines in sidewalks, some placed in regular intervals in time and space, others more the result of faulty foundations or simple accidents. She hasn’t tried to cross them yet, for fear that there are _other_ Other worlds and _other_ Other Mothers (Parents? Beldams?). Or she could just be seeing something, her mind trying to incorporate the Other World into her world, rationalize it after everything that happened. Whatever was happening, Coraline didn’t like it, not at all. She especially didn’t like it when she saw socks and toys and bugs disappear into those pockets, only to pop back into existence a couple weeks later. Once, she saw a small red ball roll out from a crack under a bush in the park, and a week later saw the exact same ball roll from a child’s hand into a reality crack. Different time. Different from how the Other World worked, sort of.

Wybie wasn’t much help here. He believed her, yes, but not as wholeheartedly as he did about the Other Mother. This was annoying, though Coraline expected this, as he had seen the Hand and could not see the cracks.

Coraline decided to name them, calling them Stretches. Wybie had called that name lame, and while Coraline kind of agreed, she stuck with it just to be stubborn. She wondered if there were others like her who could see Stretches, what they called them, but she didn’t bother trying to tell her parents about them. Stuff like this goes over grown-ups’ heads.

The cat, of course, didn’t help much whenever he showed up. At this point, Coraline could tell the difference between Stretches and whatever it was the cat did to get around. She didn’t bother trying to ask him anything, instead petting him and letting him in at night if he so chose to come. Once, she watched him walk through a Stretch under the stairs and the next moment he was falling from a Stretch just under the ceiling. He was alright, a bit miffed, but this proved that these Stretches were something other than Other, other than the cat’s own abilities, other than… well, what Coraline could call normal. Or at least could expect.

“Do you think I’d die if I walked into one on accident?” Wybie asked as they sat on the porch of the Pink Palace. Coraline scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“Uh, no,” she said, nose scrunched. “You’d just come back out somewhere else, at another time. Dunno how long it’d take for you to come out, though.”

“This sounds like something you’ve read somewhere.”

“It’s not!”

“Is too.”

“You’re supposed to believe me!”

“Yeah, I believe you, it just _really_ feels like you read this somewhere.”

Maybe she had. Maybe she was hallucinating things. Losing her marbles. Or maybe not. The cat shifted on her lap, purring like a freight train, and she idly scratched behind his ears. Man, she was glad it was spring break. It was actually sunny here, even though the weather had been trash since November. It also meant that the Stretches had been easier to spot in the sunlight.

“Maybe Stretches are only here and caused by some kind of excess spooky-whatever from the Other Mother,” Coraline wondered out loud. Wybie tilted his head, confused, then shrugged. He got what she meant enough to carry on. Coraline liked that he didn’t ask her to explain everything unless necessary, and even then he didn’t really ask.

“Like excess radiation? Whoa, maybe you’ll get some kinda excess spooky-whatever power! That’d be so cool,” Wybie said, face lighting up. He held his hands beside his head, dropping his voice and adding a wobble to it that he probably thought was scary. “Coraline, normal weird girl by day, mega-powerful villain by night!”

“Why am I a villain in your imagination,” she said, not really making it a question. The cat decided he had enough pets for the day, getting up and running off somewhere, leaving room for Coraline to place her elbows on her knees. She rested her face on her palms. “But those aren’t the point. The point is, the Stretches make it feel like the world is breaking around me. And I don’t like that.”

She furrowed her brows and stared off into the distance. She knew she was glowering, but that didn’t really matter to her. Not really. So what if she’s glowering? She has a right to! How many kids can say they faced the Other Mother and went through what she did? The only ones she can think of are dead now.

Dead. That could have been her, though what would have actually happened is worse: trapped in a dull, tiny world, unable to do anything or be anything other than the Other Mother’s energy source. Coraline shuddered, and Wybie rested his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t react, not really, but her brows softened.

“Look, I’m sure it’s not the world breaking or whatever,” Wybie said. “Just… try to ignore it. Maybe it’ll go away with time. Maybe it’s, like, part of the town or something, like, I dunno, the roads or something.”

“Probably. Thanks, Wybie.”

Somewhere in the distance, someone yelled Wybie’s name – his grandmother.

“Alright, that’s my cue for dinner. We’re still meeting tomorrow, right?”

“You know it! I’m gonna catch way more frogs than you!”

Wybie was already on his bike and taking off when Coraline yelled this, but he still threw a thumbs-down back at her. She stood, grinning, and tried to push the thought of Stretches out of her mind.

* * *

The thought of Stretches was still plaguing her mind the next afternoon, even as she scoured the forest for frogs with Wybie. She’d spotted one on the way over, a focused line of shimmering sunlight, like the edges of something invisible were blurring and refracting light. She didn’t bother telling Wybie, since he wouldn’t be able to see it.

So far, only the cat had caught a frog, proudly end its short life and carrying it around. Coraline didn’t question it, not until she spotted another Stretch further ahead of them. It was at the root of a tree, behind a root from her and Wybie’s point of view, and the cat was trotting right towards it.

Wait. The cat looked at her and seemed to wink. He sat beside the Stretch, put the frog down, and meowed until Wybie looked. Once Wybie did, the cat picked the frog back up and dropped it in the Stretch.

“Alright, buddy, why’d you get my attention like that? Are there any frogs there?” Wybie asked, smiling as he trudged over. Coraline’s breath caught in her throat. She was going to be proven right!

“…where’d it go? There’s no hole, it’s not here…” Wybie mumbled, both to the cat and himself. Coraline spotted a frog in some brush near her foot, so she squatted and somehow managed to grab it.

It dawned on Wybie. “Was a Stretch there?” he asked, eyes wide. The cat only looked at Coraline, and she looked back at both of them, their heads both cocked to the side. She nodded. “Yeah. There’s one there. Kinda small.”

“Whoa,” Wybie said. After a minute of staring, he focused on the frog still in Coraline’s hands. “No way you caught one! Now I have to catch two!”

Later, when the went down and passed the Stretch Coraline had spotted on the way over, there was a very dead, decomposing frog right in front of that Stretch, far too old to have died that day yet not there when going to the forest.

* * *

“My dear, what on earth are you even worried about?” Miss Spink asked, pouring Coraline some tea.

“So you don’t believe me?” Coraline asked, trying not to let her disappointment show.

“No, no, my dear. We believe you. What my dearest Spink here means is, why are you worried about it?” Miss Forcible said, then leaned over and fumbled to grab her own teacup.

“Well, I’m worried because I’m…” Scared, Coraline wanted to say, but she didn’t. “And I can’t really go to my parents, they’d think I’m just acting out.”

“Even though what you’re experiencing is very real?” asked Miss Spink, as she pet… Coraline couldn’t spot this dog’s name tag from this distance, and all those dogs looked the same.

“Yeah. Like how I can’t go to them about…” Coraline didn’t finish this sentence, either. Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, while nice with a dash of odd, didn’t know about what had happened to her, and Coraline wasn’t ready to let them in on it. She probably never would.

“About _boys?”_ Miss Forcible finished for Coraline, smirking knowingly, and Coraline nodded. “Er, yeah, boys.”

“Ah, I see. Well, I do believe it’s best to ignore boys, much like how it’s best to ignore Stretches. You’re far too young to be thinking about either.” Miss Spink stirred her tea, then took a sip, matter-of-fact.

Ignore them? How could she when they were everywhere? Otherworldly, encroaching, they felt like reality shifting, like when she walked around the whole Other World and everything shifted from the Pink Palace to nothing. Just seeing one out of the corner of her eye made her sick to her stomach. She must have winced, because Miss Forcible was now sitting beside her.

“My dear, I do believe that my dear Miss Spink is right. Ignoring boys can be a great way to go, boys _love_ a good chase. And the Stretches aren’t hurting anything, are they?”

Coraline shook her head, and Miss Forcible nodded.

“Then you shouldn’t worry about them. I just wouldn’t go sticking my hand in them. You don’t know what things could happen to your hands. They’re ever so important for things, like-”

“She doesn’t need that story,” Miss Spink interrupted, then finished her tea. “But she’s right. They’re not hurting you. Try ignoring them. But if they really bother you that much, please come and talk to us, dear.”

Coraline nodded, then stood, leaving her tea untouched. “Thank you for your help. I need to go now, I’ll come back soon.”

Once out, Coraline turned it over in her head. Surely they were right. No one was getting hurt. It was just something that was there, like a patch of grass or a burbling brook. Really, when she thought about it, only one thing about the Stretches scared Coraline, the one thing that made her heartbeat race and her throat squeeze shut:

_What if there was a Stretch at the bottom of the well?_


End file.
